Executive Summary

Beck Atlanta Inc. has been around for over a hundred years. First starting off as an engraving company in 1898. Later becoming a prepress company in the late 1960’s. Now Beck is a workflow consulting company focusing on creative design, digital illustration, retouching, pre-media services, asset management, package design and technical support. Since the invention of the Internet magazine, billboards and newspapers have been on the decline. As a result of that prepress work has also been on the decline. In order for Beck to survive a change was needed. Beck would become a workflow consultant company. Beck’s goal was to helping its clients with their workflows by making them shorter so that the clients can save time and money. The owner of Beck decided the change after meeting with a management consultant for creative businesses. Beck’s change was not an overnight success. It took months to get the right messaging. Beck’s current customer still regarded Beck as a prepress company. It was not till Beck decided to buy a design firm did the workflow compression change became successful. Thou Beck did not buy the design firm, but instead partnered with them in order to gain more clients. The new clients see Beck as a workflow compression company and the older clients are now accepting the change too.
The change that the owner has in mind is to become a workflow compression consulting company. In order for this change to happen Beck’s owner had hired a management consultant for creative businesses. With the help of the consultant within a year Beck changed its image from a prepress company to a workflow compression consulting company.
Analysis of Images
The image of change used was the image of director. The director image is based on an image of management as control and of change outcomes as being achievable. It is therefore up to the change manager to direct the organization in a particular ways in order to produce the required change.
The change of Beck into a consulting company comes from the top down. The owner of the company wants to change the way Beck does business and it’s his employee’s job to see his vision come to pass. As the director of change Beck’s owner along with is consultant they have outlined this change. First in order for the company itself to change the management group has change the company logo. With a new logo a new website is created to relay to Beck’s customers the change. Afterward a series of company meeting telling the employees of the changes and how to go about doing them.
The key player of Beck’s change was its management team. Beck’s owner for providing the vision of the company change and the overall plan, the management team for carrying out the plan of change, and last the employee that adapted to the change.
I learned that the image of director makes changes from the top down. Also that in order for our company to change the director is the only image of change that our company can use. That is because my company is run like a dictatorship. If the leaders could have a do-over to be honest they would not do anything different. Beck just isn’t that type of company. The only reason Beck changed was for finical reasons. Beck is run by the bottom line and will do what is needed to keep that bottom line. Now if I could give a recommendation I would say listen to your employees. The lack of trust is everywhere in Beck. Now if management would be more like a coach things would be great. A coach would shape us to be capable for competition. Like sports working at Beck can be fun.
Analysis of Vision, Mission and Strategy
The role of a vision, mission and strategy is to set goal, a plan, and how to carry out that plan. A vision is a goal a company wants to accomplish. The company mission and strategy is how a company will put the company’s vision in motion. When a company decides to change the vision, mission and strategy change too. Beck wants to become a workflow compression company and in order to do that Beck has to change its mission. Beck’s mission is to reduce graphic productions cycle time, saving money, while increasing both quality and results. The role of Beck’s mission it to help its customers with their production cycle. This can be done by saving time and cost on a production project. Beck’s mission has both strengths and weaknesses. The strength of Beck’s mission is that it’s a great idea. While the weakness is that it does not say how its going to carry out the mission. I learned that with a vision, mission and strategy makes change easier. Beck’s mission is an outline on what Beck wants to become. It tells Beck’s customers and its employees what Beck’s goals are. For a do-over the leaders of Beck would do more than a mission. I think they would have a vision and strategy. Well at least they would relay them to the employees. I would recommend the leaders of Beck to evolve the employees more. The problem with Beck is that the leaders think the employees don’t need to know anything. That they cannot help with the process. In order to change the company Beck needs to change the way it thinks of its employees.
Literature Review of Best Practices The organizations that have been successful in the type of change that Beck has undergone are Apple Computer Inc. and Hyundai. Both Apple and Hyundai turned their companies around by changing their images. Apple’s image was that of an expensive computer that only high-end digital artist used. Hyundai’s image was that they sold cheap cars that would not stay on the road for more than five years.
Indeed, Apple at 30 is a far healthier company than Apple at 20. Ten years ago, Apple was steadily losing market share with its Macs, which had kept it among the top 3 computer makers during the 1980s.
Apple commanded a 16 percent share of the PC market in 1986, making it No. 2 behind IBM, according to Daniel Daoud, an analyst at market researcher IDC, and it still held about 10.7 percent of the market as late as 1990 -- five years after Jobs was ousted from his CEO post by the board.
The Macintosh brand kept it afloat through the early 1990s even as its market share slid further starting two years after Jobs' ouster.
Apple then went through a string of CEOs as it struggled to broaden the Mac's appeal from a core user base of professional graphic designers, and released such duds as the Newton, its brick-sized personal digital assistant.
Apple's stock sank to $3.30 in July 1997, and the company reported a net loss of $708 million in its second quarter that year. Those losses came as rivals like Dell and almost every other computer company except Apple was riding the tech boom of the late 1990s.
After Jobs returned that year, Apple started releasing a string of new products, including the colorful iMacs, complete with a splashy, prime-time ad campaign. Then came the iPod, in October 2001.
Hyundai made its first appearance in the top five most considered automotive brands among new-car shoppers, according to the latest Kelley Blue Book Market Intelligence Brand Watch study.
And the Korean automaker did it by knocking Nissan into sixth place.
Among the top five, Ford kept its top spot as the most considered of 37 new-vehicle brands, with 29 percent of overall brand consideration, regardless of the segment. Toyota finished second with 22 percent, followed by Chevrolet with 21 percent, Honda with 20 percent and Hyundai with 13 percent.
The more than 3,000 new-car shoppers in this study ranked durability/reliability, driving comfort, fuel efficiency, driving performance and safety (in that order) as the top five important factors for their next new vehicle.

The diagnosis for change that best fits Apple and Hyundai is the 7 –S Framework. The 7-S framework was developed by the McKinsey & Company consultants Robert Waterman Jr., Tom Peters, and Julien Phillips. It is based on the propositions that (1) organizational effectiveness comes for the interaction of multiple factor and (2) successful change requires attention to the interconnectedness of the variables. They characterize the factor into seven categories: structure, strategy, systems, style, staff, skills , and superordinate goals.

1. Strategy: Create innovative (Apple) and better (Hyundai) products 2. Structure: Break company down into business units 3. Systems: They build a system upon sharing ideas and process 4. Style: They changed their focus to service 5. Staff: The staff has a bigger role in development 6. Skills: training and development to increase employees’ skills 7. Superordinate goals: They provided a “vision-driven” approach to change like Intuit.
Another model of diagnosis for change that fits those companies is the Force-Field Analysis model.

1. Define the problem. 2. Determine the restraining forces. 3. Determine the driving forces. 4. If the identity and strength of the restraining and driving forced have been accurately assessed, this will clarify the likely outcome.
Another model that fits the bill the Star Model for those companies. Jay Galbraith argues that an organization is at is most effective when what he labels “the five major components of organization design” are in alignment. In this model the five components are strategy, structure, processes and lateral capability, reward systems, and people practices.

In terms of handling resistance the “Power of Resistance” can be a handy tool. Its goal is to uses the power of resistance to build support for change. The five “fundamental touchstones” are: 1. Maintain clear focus. 2. Embrace resistance 3. Respect those who resist 4. Relax 5. Join with the resistance.
I think this helps by really understanding what you are up against. Using touchstones like number five you can find out peoples fear and help them overcome them. Conditions outside the Organization | A. The External Market Environment | 1.Stable And Certainx | 2.Changing slowlyx | 3.Changing at a moderate pacex | 4.Reactive and competitivex | 5.Fast-paced and unpredictable x | Conditions inside the Organization | B. The Strategy | 1.Strategy by default | 2.Wishful thinking | 3.Imitation | 4.Adaptive | 5.Proactive | C. The Work | 1.Just follow the rules exactly | 2.Select one of only several well defined choices | 3.Select one of a number of closely regulated choices | 4.Select from a number of choices that achieve well-defined results | 5.Select from many choices that have uncertain outcomes | D. The People | 1.Survival | 2.Security | 3.Belonging | 4.Accomplishment | 5.Self worth | E. The Structure | 1.Factory | 2.Committee | 3.Hospital | 4.Construction company | 5.Award winning production company | F. The Management Style | 1.Authoritarian | 2.Authoritarian with input | 3.Consultative | 4.Adaptive | 5.Inter-dependent |

The concept model that is most appropriate is the Force-Field Analysis model. The reason for this Beck is a reaction based company. The only reason for Beck to change is an outside force causes the change.
Analysis of the overall change situation and recommendations for the next steps Force-Field Analysis is another model for looking at the factors that can assist or hinder the implementation of change. The forces pushing for change are driving forces; those working against the change are restraining forces.

I think the best tool for change for Beck is the Force-Field Analysis model. Beck needs reasons to change and a great way to show that is though the Force-Field Analysis model. It show Beck what its driving forces as well as its restraining forces.
Beck restraining forces: Management’s fear of change Learning a new way to do things Lack of resources Lack of training Lack of sales force
Beck driving forces: * Industry changes (Going Digital) * Technology changes * Customer requirements * New ideas * Process improvements * Economy * New customers * Partnerships
The outcome of the use of the Force-Field Analysis model is that Beck can see what is causing Beck to change. Once Beck knows what is the causes of a change are Beck can then plan accordantly. Beck as I have stated before is a reaction-based company. Meaning they need something like a driving force to bring forth change. I learned that there is always a reason for change. Also that there are reason why change is feared in changing the way a company works. Restraining and driving forces can be used to bring about change and make people more accepting of the change. If leadership knew about Force-Field Analysis method I think our process of change would have been different. First they would have look at all of there restraining forces and tried to lessen them. For example the lack of training, Beck could send someone for training or have someone come in to train the employees. Beck could have also used their driving forces more effectually. A few months ago a customer required Beck to have extended gambit. Beck did not include the IT department in the discussions. Beck ended up wasting time and money getting the wrong equipment due to the lack of preplanning. You see Beck did not use its driving force to help them. It made it more of a restraining force.
Conclusion
When the change of Beck was first brought up it was seen as a joke. Nobody really knew what was going on. We saw this new logo and company colors and didn’t like them. The logo was called the “Beck Balls” which wasn’t seen in a positive light. The change really wasn’t explained well to the employees. I was like a vision only in the owner head and he could not get the right words out to explain it. To the employees it just seem like nothing was going on just a change of the candy wrapper you could say. No one did anything differently so how could we be going through a change? What had happened and what the employees didn’t realize was that the company did change. It was little by little so no one noticed. We had been consulting our costumers. We had been developing and improving workflow. All the management did was finally give it a name. They hyped it up to the employees and that was not needed. It should only have been done that way for our customers. Going forward I recommend that management get the employee involved sooner and not hype up change like they have done before. The reason for getting involved is that the will feel apart of the change. A way to lessen the fear of change is to not make it a big deal. By hyping up the change it cause fear. Beck should use the Force-Field Analysis model next time when facing change. It would make thinks clear and to the point just the way the employee and management like. Beck could also have something more than just a mission. Leadership should outline a vision for the company. Like “I see Beck becoming the leader in workflow consulting”. Beck needs a strategy to get Beck where they want it to go in the future. Beck has to let all employees know the strategy. How can the employees help the company grow if they don’t know what is going on? Beck can be as good or bad as they want it to be. Its just the matter of communicating things so that people feel that they are apart of something instead of a tool to be used.

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[ 1 ]. Reference
Item B, p. 27.

Ian Palmer, Richard Danford, Gib Akin. (2005). Managing Organizational Change: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
[ 2 ]. Item 1
By Amanda Cantrell, CNNMoney.com staff writer
March 29, 2006: 6:34 PM EST http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/29/technology/apple_anniversary/?cnn=yes [ 3 ]. Item 2
August 12, 2010, 12:32 pm
Hyundai Is ‘On a Roll’ With Car BuyersBy CHERYL JENSEN http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/hyundai-is-on-a-roll-with-car-buyers/ [ 4 ]. Item B, p. 151
Ian Palmer, Richard Danford, Gib Akin. (2005). Managing Organizational Change: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
[ 5 ]. Item B, p. 126
Ian Palmer, Richard Danford, Gib Akin. (2005). Managing Organizational Change: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
[ 6 ]. Item B, p. 151

Ian Palmer, Richard Danford, Gib Akin. (2005). Managing Organizational Change: McGraw-Hill Irwin.